Rogue clone by Steven L. Kent

tall and he had me by an inch or two. On the other hand, he may well have weighed less than 150 pounds. Klyber stood perfectly erect, his rigid posture and skinny body made him look like he was made out of the outer limbs of an old oak tree. He had icy blue eyes that looked as focused and intense as sapphire lasers.
    He turned to the two senior officers. “Perhaps we can take this up again later this evening. I have some business to take care of with the corporal.”
    Halverson and Johansson saluted and walked off to continue their discussion.
    “What do you think, Harris?” Klyber asked, looking around the bridge.
    “She looks ready to run,” I said, noting the brightly lit navigational panels.
    “More or less,” Klyber said. “It’s not the equipment that worries me. I worry more about the men at her helm. You get a limited selection of officers with top-secret projects. My crew was chosen for security clearance, not battle experience. If I wanted a ship full of military police and intelligence officers, this would be the ideal crew.”
    “You worked with Halverson in Scutum-Crux,” I pointed out.
    “Tom Halverson does what he can. I like Halverson,” Klyber said. He looked around to make sure that no one was within earshot of us and lowered his voice. “What did you think of Johansson?”
    “Not especially friendly,” I said. “He doesn’t make a great first impression.”
    Klyber smiled and took one last look around the bridge. “Let’s head down to my quarters.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said.
    We entered the elevator.
    “What happened on New Columbia?” Klyber asked.
    “Mogat terrorists happened,” I said. The elevator doors slid closed and I felt the slightest vibration as we dropped three decks and sixty feet. The doors opened.
    “Anyone I have heard of?” Klyber asked.
    “William Patel,” I said.
    “Billy the Butcher? Are you sure it was him?”
    “I saw him myself, sir,” I said. We entered the corridor that led to officer country. “Callahan, the informant you sent me to meet, fingered him. Callahan thought he could earn himself some credibility and a nice reward by handing him over to us.”
    Officers walked past us in groups of two and three. They all stopped to salute as Klyber walked by. Klyber returned their salutes without breaking stride.
    “Patel was wise to him?”
    “Have you met Callahan? He figured he could pinch both sides of the loaf. He sold Patel supplies and us information. It takes a subtle hand to play both sides off like that. Subtlety is not one of Callahan’s stronger suits.”
    We entered the admiral’s suite which included his quarters, a large office, and his war room. “So you don’t think the bombs were meant for you?”
    “Not a chance,” I said.
    “What tipped you off to the bombs?” Klyber asked.
    “We were sitting on this balcony overlooking the street and out comes Patel, practically right on cue. He’s too far away to nab, but somehow he knows where we are sitting and he looks up at us. I mean, he’s a hundred yards away and he looks right at us.
    “I didn’t trust Callahan. He struck me as a punk . . . a small brain with a big mouth. So when Patel looks right at us, I figure he knows exactly what Callahan is up to. The only question I had was if we could make it out in time.
    “The big question is, who tipped Patel off?”
    Klyber listened to this, his blue-fire eyes seeming to X-ray my thoughts as I spoke. “Do you have any theories?”
    “Somebody on your staff,” I said.
    “Interesting that you would say that. Of course, you realize that parked as we are so far from the Broadcast Network, we don’t have communications with the outside world. In order to get a message to Patel, our spy would need to travel . . . broadcast to another location.
    “Given that, do you still think the leak came from here?”
    This quadrant of the galaxy was dark. Communications were transferred through the Broadcast Network and the Doctrinaire was nearly